A Time for Silence?

(Reprinted from the issue of April 3, 2003)

Now that the war on Iraq has begun, many
people, including some who have opposed war from the start, take the
view that we must now suspend criticism and support the
president. I understand the sentiment, but it seems to me to get
some basic principles backward.

Under our
constitutional principles, We the People are the ultimate
authority in the United States, and our officeholders are our servants.
There is no room for a quasi-sovereign or quasi-monarchical presidency
which we are bound to obey, especially when it comes dangerously near to
usurping powers delegated by the people to other branches of government,
such as the power to declare war.

Yet many Americans
talk as if exercising the right of criticism which belongs to the people
were a kind of disobedience to authority, or even a form of aid and
comfort to the enemy. And how long should such criticism be suspended?

This already
threatens to become a long war. We must be prepared for a protracted
struggle. Not only is Iraq, at this early phase, stubbornly resisting
American efforts to liberate it; President Bush has
suggested the need to liberate neighboring countries, effecting
regime change and establishing democracy
throughout the Mideast, a project that would require some years, or even
decades.

If it becomes
another Vietnam, or worse, why shouldnt we criticize the
government that has brought it on?

Free criticism of the
government is not just rude heckling; it is supposed to be part of the
process of governance itself. Otherwise, we are at the mercy of
government propaganda.

It may even be a
misnomer to speak of the war on Iraq. The neoconservatives
who have shaped our presidents thinking have been calling openly
for World War IV to achieve regime change in most of the
Arab countries and Iran. Michael Ledeen, a prominent neoconservative,
calls the attack on Iraq just one battle in a broader war.
Iran, he adds, is the mother of modern terrorism.

Richard Perle, yet
another influential neoconservative, pronounces himself rather
optimistic that we will see regime change in Iran without any use of
military power by the United States. But of course this hardly
rules out U.S. military power, if necessary, to effect that regime change.

So we may be in only
the first phase of World War IV. Surely we may, without disloyalty, oppose
the projected attacks on Iran, Syria, and other countries.
A Personal Note

I have just been
listed among unpatriotic conservatives by one David Frum
in a cover story in National Review for my failure to support
the hawks before the attack on Iraq. Frum also cites Patrick Buchanan,
Robert Novak, Charley Reese, Thomas Fleming, and Samuel Francis among
those who are waging war on America.

Frum has patriotic
credentials, of sorts. He is now best known as the author of Mr.
Bushs Axis of Evil speech, laying the rhetorical
groundwork for a war beyond Iraq. Though he hails from Canada, I gather he
is now technically an American citizen.

I first met the
patriotic Mr. Frum 20 years ago, when I still worked for National
Review. (At that time and long afterward, I must say, I always
found him personally genial.) His first contribution to the magazine was
an article warning that a Reagan arms sale to Saudi Arabia, by endangering
Israel, would drive many people away from the conservative movement.

At the time I was
too naïve to have suspicions of Frum. But two things about his article
troubled me.

First, the question
for Americans should have been not whether the arms sale was good for
Israel, but whether it was good for America. But this obvious
consideration didnt seem to occur to Frum, who now challenges the
patriotism of Americans. (Nor did Canadian interests seem to concern him,
but never mind.)

Second,
conservatism was a whole philosophy of government, and it struck me as
odd that anyone, let alone many people, should reject its
principles  natural law, tradition, limited government, prudence,
constitutional constraints  over something as trivial as an arms
sale.

Gradually it sank
into my slow brain that Frums many people 
the neoconservatives  regarded both America and conservative
principles as purely instrumental to Israels welfare. Such is his,
and their, American patriotism. We are entitled to wonder why they are
eager to see the United States fight a war concentrated in the Mideast,
against Israels enemies.

But they are equally
eager to suppress this question. Frums latest article is an
audacious attempt to silence conservative opponents of the war by
smearing them. All of his targets are manifestly patriotic men, who have
opposed war on Iraq because they regard it as harmful, not helpful, to
America. How it must elate him to be allowed to indict their loyalty in the
very magazine that once symbolized American conservatism!

In fact,
Frums article marks the takeover of the American conservative
movement by neoconservatives who care nothing for the principles of
classical conservatism. Just as pro-Soviet Communists once infiltrated
the ranks of liberals by adopting liberal rhetoric, today the pro-Israel
neoconservatives ape conservative rhetoric for their own purposes.

True to form, Frum
makes no reference to conservative principles in pronouncing certain
paleoconservatives unpatriotic. He insinuates, of course,
that they are racists, anti-Semites, nativists, etc. But their war
on America seems to consist entirely in applying their principles
to the current U.S. government and reaching conclusions he dislikes. He
especially dislikes their suspicion that the war on Iraq and its neighbors
will serve the interests of Israel, not the adopted country to which he has
recently sworn allegiance. Either they are unpatriotic or he is.

But as in his article
on Reagans arms sale, Frum never gets around to a discussion of
conservative principles. He seems unaware, and utterly unconcerned, that
the U.S. government today is further than ever from its founding
principles, the very principles his unpatriotic
conservatives have struggled to conserve. All that matters is that
they oppose the war he craves.

Frum has described
himself as liberal on social issues, including
abortion. So it seems that you can be a full-fledged member of the Culture
of Death  pro-abortion and pro-war  and still be
a good American.

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